12/12/2007

The first delivery of Pencils2MediaMoguls took place on Tuesday 12/11 in Burbank. Check out our photoset on Flickr. Full report from Jeffrey Berman:

We had a good crowd. The press was there. ABC, NBC, AP and several local radio stations including KFWB covered the event.

Ron Moore read a statement to the press, then we dumped the pencils into the delivery bins, which filled up very quickly. We then rolled them over to NBC followed by procession of folks chanting as we approached the gate. Ron told the guard we were here to deliver the pencils to Jeff Zucker and the guard turned us away. I used their company phone and called Zucker's office and asked his secretary if at the very least Mr. Zucker could come down and address us. She promptly hung up on me.

We then rolled the pencils over to Disney and asked for Bob Iger. The guard told us they weren't accepting deliveries at the main gate. So Ron asks which gate they would accept them, and the guard calmly responds, "We're not accepting deliveries at any gate."

At Universal they wouldn't even let me near the front gate. A policeman told me he had already spoken to the main office and they didn't want our delivery.

I hope they won't give up. They should ship boxes to each network so that they are forced to deal with them. I bought a bunch for this drive, but I think I'll go buy some more pencils and send them in envelopes to the studio heads. It will be interesting to see how the media covers this!

What a waste of money and resources. Get a clue, Ron and Joss. Have your supporters spend their money on buying food for the homeless and poor -- or how about all the crewpeople who are unemployed because of the strike? Spend your money on that instead of on a bunch of pencils that will wind up in the garbage. Seriously, I used to respect Ron Moore but he's gone off the deep end.

1. The pencils thing basically came from the fans. The fans don't work for Ronald D. Moore and he has no ability to tell them what to do. Sure, some WGA folks facilitated the process a bit, but mostly this was a fan-generated initiative (based, apparently, on past campaigns to get favorite TV shows back on the air).

2. The money raised from the campaign actually is going to the WGA strike fund as well as I think the Motion Picture Fund which helps people in the industry (not just writers).

3. The point of this excersize was for fans to be able to demonstrate in some way that they stand with the writers. Everyone who is motivated enough to buy pencils is surely motivated enough to avoid buying DVDs or going to the movie theater this holiday season. So its not really pointless.

4. We all know the pencils aren't going to get accepted, they're going to wind up getting donated to the L.A. School System or something. I don't think anyone doubted that from the beginning.

And Jeremy; I'm very happy to hear you are spending your time and effort on your own chosen causes for the homeless and poor. I admire and support your decision :)

But why would you assume that those of us supporting this cause are not supporting others as well? Personally, I manage to volunteer and/or donate to more than one cause on a regular basis without feeling conflicted at all.

But why would you assume that those of us supporting this cause are not supporting others as well

Because this strike has put 50,000 IATSE and DGA members out-of-work a month before Christmas, that's why. The writers need to put their money where their mouths are and donate every last penny to the out-of-work crewmembers. I support what the writers are asking for but there's a right and a wrong way to go about it. Hurting 50,000 people in the crossfire is the wrong way (unless you're George W. Bush, of course). :)

"What happens to the money from the pencils?Anything we have left over from our costs will go into the Union Solidarity Fund, which was created to help non-WGA members affected by the strike."

And the pencils will go to a school or charity, it's not like they'll be thrown away. More importantly, they gave the fans something symbolic and easy to rally behind, and the delivery attracted the attention of the media. I'm not seeing a problem here.

Jeremy by your logic no one -- including IATSE -- should ever strike because it can cause collateral damage. It sucks for BTL folks and I don't want to belittle your feelings. They are valid. I do believe they're misdirected. The AMPTP has walked away from the table, not WGA. ONE of the things they are fighting to maintain is the right to honor other union pickets so if DGA, SAG or IATSE go on strike, writers honor the line. A lot of people are hurting. Yes, WGA went on strike. But, they didn't go on strike because AMPTP was offering a great deal, and they wanted more. They went on strike because AMPTP was offering nothing.

I know what you're saying. The difference is that I expect a-hole behavior from the AMPTP. But not from the WGA. IATSE BEGGED the WGA to PLEASE not strike, especially at this time of year. The pleas fell on deaf ears.

IMHO the WGA could take a lesson from the DGA, and learn that you usually get what you ask for if you kiss the AMPTP's butt rather than pissing them off. The sad fact is that striking in this business usually achieves nothing, no matter how noble the cause.

I wish the WGA the best but I have a sneaking feeling they're gonna get none of what they're asking for. In the meantime there's massive collateral damage, and that should be on BOTH sides' consciences.

Jeremy, we are still on the same subject right? That is; the pencils purchased by fans (not writers)?

So you are chiding the fans (not the writers) for supporting one cause (pencils2moguls) 'over' another (IATSE/homelessness/poverty)?

My purchase of pencils no more detracted from my contributions to the below-the-line folks than the money I spent on canned food donations on ME day detracted from my pencil buying.

Cause it seems like now you're trying to make the point that the strike itself is wrong. Which may be your opinion and you're certainly entitled to it. But using a side door argument to get to make that point comes across faintly troll-y.

Jeremy, we are still on the same subject right? That is; the pencils purchased by fans (not writers)?

So you are chiding the fans (not the writers) for supporting one cause (pencils2moguls) 'over' another (IATSE/homelessness/poverty)?

My purchase of pencils no more detracted from my contributions to the below-the-line folks than the money I spent on canned food donations on ME day detracted from my pencil buying.

Cause it seems like now you're trying to make the point that the strike itself is wrong. Which may be your opinion and you're certainly entitled to it. But using a side door argument to get to make that point comes across faintly troll-y.

No trolling here. Support the WGA's demands. Think that the strike is causing too much collateral damage. Pencils irritate me because that's money and effort that could be going to support underprivileged people, including out-of-work crewmembers.

"Because this strike has put 50,000 IATSE and DGA members out-of-work a month before Christmas, that's why. The writers need to put their money where their mouths are and donate every last penny to the out-of-work crewmembers. I support what the writers are asking for but there's a right and a wrong way to go about it. "

And the right way would be ritual suicide or what? The studios are the ones who fired these people - the are the ones to blame. And you say these people begged the WGA not to strike - so these people just thought of themselves, like you accuse the WGA of.The AMPTP are the greedy bastards already making a ton of money from an amoral business concept (that of copyright), so its time they share a bit of that - they can do that now, in six months or a year from now - and once they do it they should do well to remember its a fraction of the loot the rake in - but they will do it. Assuming they want this buisness to survive.

Send them the pencils in small packages. Six at a time. In the mail. Raise the money if necessary to do this. It will flood the studios mailrooms and make work impossible. Then we'll see the power of the pencil....

So anyone who posts here who doesn't agree 100% with everything United Hollywood is doing is a "prickish troll"? What happened to open discussion? What happened to reasoned debate? Again, I SUPPORT the WGA's demands, but when you are called a "prickish troll" for expressing your feelings about being unemployed due to the strike, what's that about?

Go ahead, keep towing the party line like a lemming, worship at the altar of United Hollywood, bolger. See how many more innocent people you can hurt by collateral damage. Just remember there are some people (MOST people) with objective minds who don't necessarily subscribe to the idea of partisan bickering.

This annoys me. Not just because of, you know, the lack of resolution to the strike. But because, dammit, I spent an entire dollar on one of those pencils. And dammit, the studios didn't even want my pencil.

So now I'm curious--where's my pencil going to go? I mean, that's an awful lot of pencils, and if the studios don't want it, what's going to happen to them all?

I'm a little worried about the disrepect Mr Whedon and Mr Moore showed towards the pencils themselves: The way they threw / poured them the lead inside the pencils will break wich will render them essentially unusable for any of the charities they're eventually going to. :-(

Links from Around the Web

The Big Introduction

Who are you people? United Hollywood advocates for working people in the entertainment industry facing the digital revolution. We are not an official site of any guild or union, so our opinions are our own. Founded by a group of WGA strike captains, our contributors are both writers and non-writers. If you've got any questions or stories we should know about, email us at unitedhollywood [at] gmail [dot] com.

Video Blogging

Check out U.H. videos on our YouTube page. Here are a few from our page and from some of our friends: